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Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred’s impact on aviation has become clearer, with cancellation rates rising in the month of March due primarily to the storm.
Five per cent of domestic flights across all participating airlines were cancelled last month according to BITRE data, up from 2.6 per cent in February, with a hefty percentage coming from Cyclone Alfred and related airport disruptions from 5 to 11 March.
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Alfred, which made landfall as a tropical low on 8 March, causing severe flooding, forced the closure of several airports in South-East Queensland and northern NSW, including Brisbane, Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast and Ballina-Byron.
According to Virgin Australia, 84 per cent of all its cancellations in March were related to Tropical Cyclone Alfred, while for its part Qantas Group noted that more than half of Jetstar’s domestic network touches Queensland and was severely impacted.
“Despite facing challenges from Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, which temporarily affected operations at key Queensland and Northern NSW airports, our dedicated team successfully maintained our industry-leading on-time performance,” said Virgin Australia general manager, integrated operations centre, Danny Norman.
“Our resilience during this severe weather event highlights our operational strength and adaptability.
“While the cyclone temporarily impacted our overall March completion rate of 94.5 per cent, it’s worth noting that outside this period we achieved an outstanding 98.8 per cent completion rate of scheduled domestic flights – a testament to our operational excellence during normal conditions.”
Last month also saw Virgin Australia Regional Airlines (VARA) score a 100 per cent completion rate.
VARA, which primarily operates in Western Australia, did not cancel any of its 194 flights last month, compared to 5.5 per cent cancellations for Virgin mainline services and 5.4 per cent for the group as a whole.
VARA also beat every other participating airline except Skytrans for on-time arrivals, at 88.1 per cent to Skytrans’ 90.1 per cent.
Qantas noted that its domestic operations, including QantasLink, have seen more than 80 per cent of flights depart on time for the past several months, with around 80 per cent of Jetstar flights also arriving and departing on time in March.
“We’re really proud of the work our people have put in to improve reliability and maintain strong performance across our operations,” a spokesperson said.
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